


The Flower and Willow World

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hannibal Rising References, Mental Illness, post-dolce
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 16:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4356680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castle Lecter is in need of a new mistress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FanchonMoreau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanchonMoreau/gifts).



Bedelia obediently accepts the paper cup full of sedatives from the night nurse and tips them into her mouth. She is careful to tuck the pills under her tongue and present an empty mouth to the nurse. The nurse thinks her a poor, sweet confused woman kidnapped by the Chesapeake Ripper, the only victim to escape him miraculously unharmed and uneaten. Bedelia could tell her that miracles had little to do with it.

She’s sixty-two days in to a ninety day (voluntary) involuntary psychiatric hold. At Port Haven, she plays the role of the delicate invalid, of the mental health professional turned mental hospital patient. It’s tedious work—nearly as tedious as listening to Hannibal prattle on about Will Graham and the capricious nature of love and betrayal—but not quite. She knows she shouldn’t be too uncharitable toward Hannibal. He came through for her in the end, swore up and down to the FBI, the Questura, and anyone who would listen that he kidnapped her, drugged her, and brainwashed her into thinking she was his wife. He even went a step further and claimed responsibility for killing her patient all those years ago—it was rather like receiving a diamond tennis bracelet when one wasn’t expecting it. Really, it was probably the most thoughtful thing he’d ever done for her.

Bedelia listens for the shuffle of the nurse’s footsteps to grow fainter before removing the pills and carefully slipping them into the toe of one of her slippers. She’s accumulated quite a nice stash of meds. Occasionally she’ll take a valium or a xanax for the hell of it, to help pass the time on a day she is particularly bored—some days it is too much effort to pretend to be stoned and the truth helps to sell the lie. Bedelia leans back on the pillows and sighs. She must commit to her commitment. It is a sad irony she no longer has to fake the symptoms of PTSD—the flashbacks and panic attacks emerged quite organically on their own, triggered by food. How uninspired.

Her act might not have fooled Jack Crawford or Will Graham, but there is little they can do in the face of Hannibal’s confession and the tide of public opinion rising up to meet her. God bless Fredericka Lounds and her steaming manure heap of a publication—maybe Bedelia should buy her a diamond bracelet when all is said and done. There’s nothing the public loves more than a tragic, photogenic female victim who dramatically slips the killer’s grasp, bruised and battered, in the final frame.

But the readers of TattleCrime.com aren’t her only admirers—her former colleagues Frederick Chilton and Alana Bloom have also been dancing attendance during visiting hours. They come seeking a second-hand, intimate whiff of Hannibal the Cannibal, the kind only she can provide. She knows how Frederick hungers to shoot her up with sodium amytal and play a private game of twenty questions and she knows how it frustrates him he cannot do so, not without any criminal charges against her. Alana Bloom’s intentions have more to do with self-identification than ambition, transparent as daylight in her bright blue eyes as she not so subtly hints at sexual abuse and the benefits of hypnotherapy.

Bedelia did not survive a year as the wife of Hannibal Lecter to let these two amateurs scramble her mind and fry it up like an omelet. She plans on making a full recovery before her commitment hearing, and if she doesn’t, well...there are other methods of escape. Bedelia thinks of the pills tucked inside her slipper and smiles—she hasn’t ruled out suicide yet. She’s vowed she’ll kill herself (poison preferably, spoils the meat) before she’ll ever give Hannibal the satisfaction.

Really, she’s not a well woman. Hasn’t been one for some time.

Bedelia pulls the itchy hospital sheets up to her chin, her personal discomfort comforted by the thought of Hannibal tossing and turning on a thin, springy prison cot in the bowels of the BSHCI. She’s about to drift off to sleep when she hears the door creek open ever so softly.

A figure stands silhouetted in the doorway, feminine and familiar. The silhouette moves closer to perch on the edge of her bed and says, “Here you are. The same golden bird imprisoned in a different cage.”

“Visiting hours are over, Chiyo. What brings you to my bedside, and so stealthily?”

“When we met before, you told me you were Hannibal’s psychiatrist.” Chiyo’s dark eyes flick from Bedelia’s face to her left hand and the wedding ring she still wears. Bedelia wears it partly to sell the fiction of Mrs. Fell, partly for her own reasons. “You did not tell me you were family, too. That is Lady Murasaki’s ring.”

“And that detail is significant to you.”

Chiyo’s eyes dim sadly in the half-light. “The Lecters are…were…the only family I have ever known.” Her face brightens, feverish with joy. “I can free you from this cage if you will let me.”

The proposition has a familiar ring to it, one that experience has taught her to treat with suspicion. “You managed to cage Hannibal. How do I know you don’t mean to cage me, too?”

Chiyo smiles back at her without showing teeth, but does not answer.

“Where will we go?” Bedelia asks, giving this proposition some serious thought.

“Castle Lecter is in need of a new mistress.”

Bedelia would be lying if she said she wasn’t intrigued—to see the place that birthed the beast, his first acolyte at her side. It feels like a pilgrimage. “And you, Chiyo, are you searching for a new mistress as well?” Bedelia asks, reaching out to grasp her small hand in her own.

“Fly away with me and see,” Chiyo says with a playful tug.

Lithuania it is then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title refers to "karyukai," the world of the Japanese geisha, which is believed to be almost suspended in time. The flowers are the courtesans, the geisha are the willows, which bend gracefully but do not break.
> 
> Bedelia is delightfully demented here, but she'll get better.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bedelia follows Chiyo back to the Lecter family estate. It’s another journey down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass.

Bedelia follows Chiyo back to the Lecter family estate. It’s another journey down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. She punches her return ticket to the underworld, chasing the scent of a man who had in equal turns tormented and beguiled her.

She’d always considered her home in Baltimore to be her fortress, its bronze door and stone walls protecting her from the fatiguing whims of a mediocre world—at least until the day she let the devil in. Now she lives in a literal castle at the center of a dark wood. The halls are drafty and smell of mold, blood, and dust. Bedelia feels like the heroine of some gothic novel as she prowls Castle Lecter’s lonely corridors searching for a hint of Hannibal, the madwoman in her own attic. It’s  _Grey Gardens_ , Lithuanian-style, but it certainly beats the endless pastel tedium of Port Haven.

Chiyo whisks away the dust cloths and clears out the mothballs so that she may have the late Lady Murasaki’s chambers. With its dark wood paneling and delicate Queen Anne furniture it is a suite fit for a vampire countess. The wardrobes are filled with fox furs and vintage Dior. It is as if the place has lain in slumber, waiting for her.

There’s a wedding portrait in black and white of Murasaki and Hannibal’s uncle Robertus in a silver frame on the vanity table. Murasaki wears a flowing light-colored kimono, dark hair falling to her waist. Her husband looks gravely at the camera—Bedelia would estimate him to be at least two decades Murasaki’s senior.

“The photograph does not do her justice. She bent like a willow, but was sharper than steel. As effortlessly graceful as a sakura blossom falling to the earth, yet the blood of the samurai flowed hot in her veins.” Chiyo swallows. “I miss her still.”

“She was your teacher.”

“She was my everything.”

“Were they happy?” Bedelia asks, nodding at the portrait.

Chiyo gives a noncommittal shrug. “He was a great deal older than her, but he was kind. And wealthy. A skilled musician,” she says with a smile, “like Hannibal. Her father had been deputy ambassador to France. She did not wish to return to Japan—she preferred the West. She saw her opportunity and she took it.”

“Pragmatic woman,” Bedelia says with admiration.

Chiyo picks up another portrait—a sketch of Murasaki’s nude back—rendered in pen and ink by a familiar hand. “Hannibal was very much in love with her, you know.”

She knows. “And you were in love with him.”

“I could not compete with her,” Chiyo shakes her head, and Bedelia hears a lifetime of regret in her words. “He saw me only as a child. As a sister.”

Bedelia touches Chiyo’s sleeve cautiously. “Perhaps that was for the best.”

Chiyo whips around on her, daggers in her eyes. “I can think of nothing worse,” she says before stalking out the door.

*****

They fall into their places quite naturally. Chiyo kills and dresses the pheasants and Bedelia cooks them with wine and sage and butter. Seeing Chiyo pluck the feathers, feeling the cold meat beneath her own hands reduces her anxiety—she nearly finds herself enjoying mealtimes again. After dinner, they share a cognac by the fireside. Chiyo talks and Bedelia listens, the pattern as familiar to her as a worn leather glove.

Their favorite topic is Hannibal, of course.

“He treats us all like Beauty Asleep—we lie dormant, slumbering, till he wakes us. Not with a kiss, but with violence,” Chiyo says, gripping her tulip-shaped glass.

Bedelia nods but does not tell Chiyo that in the original version of that tale, Beauty is woken with something much more forceful than a kiss. “But then you fell asleep again, until Will Graham woke you once more.”

Chiyo pointedly ignores her. “With you it is different. You make me feel like Scheherazade. I spin out my tales for you every night—stories of Hannibal in his youth, of my mistress and her husband. What will happen when I run out of tales to tell you?”

It’s not untrue. Bedelia changes tactics, misdirects. “Hannibal thinks of me as Faust—a doctor who bargained away her soul for great knowledge. And perhaps I am, but I have no intention of ever letting him collect on our bargain.”

“Oh?” Chiyo asks, wide-eyed and curious.

“Not everyone who bargains with the devil loses.” Bedelia swirls her cognac, enjoying the way the firelight dances in the glass, the way the liquid burns all the way down her gullet, making her feel potent and alive. “There are other tales, tales Hannibal is ignorant of because he dismisses them as low, of boastful fiddle players and brazen girls who beat the devil. It can be done—I have done it.”

“Why?”

“To prove I could.” It’s the best explanation she can give.

Chiyo looks at her a bit fearfully over the rim of her glass. “Beating the devil does not make you an angel. I think you are another demon from a different hell.”

Bedelia smiles at the thought and gathers it close to keep out the chill.

*****

“Hannibal taught me to kill and to cage. But I have other talents. Let me show you,” Chiyo says one chilly winter afternoon.

Intrigued, Bedelia acquiesces, and lets Chiyo drag her off to Murasaki’s boudoir where a fine kimono has been laid out on her bed like a shroud. Bedelia undresses as Chiyo wraps her first in cotton, then heavy silk, surprisingly warm. The kimono is indigo, embroidered cranes soar at the sleeves over crashing Hokusai waves at the hem. There is a strange intimacy between them as Chiyo dresses her, binding and folding and refolding, tying a thick brocade obi around her like a bow on an exquisitely wrapped gift. Her touch is too lingering to be clinical. It reminds her of those evenings in Florence, Hannibal dressing and undressing her, and the elegant couture she could never seem to get into or out of without his assistance.

Chiyo steps back to admire her handiwork, pulling and straightening. “Your breasts are too big,” she says with a frown.

Bedelia feels the beginnings of a smile tug at her lips. “That’s usually not a problem.”

“Overall, you wear kimono very well. Most western women cannot.” Bedelia supposes this passes as a kind of compliment. It’s honesty, not rudeness. “Come,” Chiyo says, dragging her playfully by her overlarge sleeve.

Bedelia follows Chiyo down a maze of corridors and up staircases until they emerge in a room with shoji screens and tatami floors high atop one of the castle’s towers. “Robertus built this room for Murasaki so she could enjoy tea ceremony. Hannibal and I spent many hours with her here.” Chiyo kneels at a low lacquered table and motions for Bedelia to do the same. “Today I will share it with you.”

The ceremony is a long, contemplative process, but Bedelia has always been a patient observer. Eventually, she is forced to rest on her side, her kneels unused to the posture. Chiyo, dressed in a deep purple  _furisode_  kimono (a  _maiden’s_  kimono Chiyo stresses), whisks bright green matcha into a froth and serves her pale pink candies. The tea is too bitter and the sweets too sweet, but somehow there is harmony in these extremes. Snow falls softly outside on the pines, the world bathed in a glowing winter white, and it’s like living inside a haiku. Bedelia is painfully aware of the two missing places at the table and feels Hannibal and Murasaki both haunting them, specters at the feast.

Halfway through the ceremony, Chiyo fetches her koto and begins to play for her, plucking at the strings and lulling her into a dreamy haze. The sound is not otherworldy like a harp, but something deeper and more raw, the plucked sorrows of the human heart set to music. When she has finished playing, Chiyo wipes away a tear.

“That was very beautiful. Thank you.”

“I have not played in so long. I have had no one to play for.”

“I know,” Bedelia says, feeling a twinge of sympathy. She remembers all too well the days spent alone in her house following her attack with Hannibal as her only visitor. “We all need an audience for our talents.”

“Was Hannibal your audience?”

“For many years, my only audience.”  _And I was his_.

“You said you were his psychiatrist. I think you are his geisha.”

The accusation ruffles Bedelia a bit—somewhere what remains of her professional ethics are offended. “Hannibal was my patient. I do not offer sexual favors to my patients.” Only to former patients who are too enticing to resist.

“You misunderstand, foreigners always do. A geisha is not a prostitute,” Chiyo corrects. She takes Bedelia’s hand in hers and draws the kanji with her fingernail on her palm. “The word comes from the character  _gei_  which means “art” and  _sya_  for “person”—a geisha is a doer of art, an artist.”

“An artist of the mind.” Bedelia retrieves her hand, still feeling Chiyos touch sear into her palm. “I’ve always believed psychiatry to be a mixture of art and science.”

“He kept you alive because you entertained him. A geisha is skilled in the art of conversation, she is praised for her wit. Her clients know she is not available to them sexually and that is part of the allure, Murasaki told me,” Chiyo says breathlessly, turning aside to cover a hint of a blush. “Except for one special client, the  _danna_ , or patron. She is his and his alone.”

Chiyo is a skilled huntress and her words have hit their mark. Murasaki's wedding ring gleams dully in the pale winter light. “And here I am, a geisha without a patron.”

Chiyo’s eyes flick up, fervent and dark. “You are his geisha and I am yours.” She leans forward and kisses her softly, a gentle press of sweet and bitter.

Bedelia holds herself still, feels her blood hum like the strings of the koto, suddenly aware of her nipples hardening between the tightly wrapped layers of silk. She combs a hand softly through Chiyo’s hair until she closes her eyes, purring like a contented cat. “Why did you bring me here, Chiyo? What do you want?”

Chiyo kisses her again, and again, and again, each kiss building with intensity, heating her, until Bedelia feels like a kettle about to sing. “Perhaps it is your turn to be the patron,” Chiyo whispers before nipping at her lower lip.

Bedelia lets Chiyo tumble her back, lets her nimble fingers work at the knots until they are both lying naked in a pool of silk. They press and rock against each other, Bedelia’s full breasts against Chiyo’s slender ones, pleasure rolling over them like waves licking at the shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The indigo in Bedelia's kimono is a reference to healing, the plant was known to ward off serpents and snakes. Cranes are for grace and long-life. 
> 
> Relationships between geishas and their patrons are still somewhat shrouded in mystery. The danna-geisha relationship is not necessarily always a sexual one, but there is a heightened intimacy. Chiyoh herself doesn't really know, but she finds it a convenient way to explain the relationship between Bedelia and Hannibal. 
> 
> Thank you to all who asked for Bedeliyoh fic. I've been meaning to write Hannibal femslash for ages and sometimes I need a little push. There will probably be one or two more chapters, but I am weak and wanted to post these sooner rather than later. Will our heroines wake themselves from their enchanted slumber? Tune in next time.


End file.
